SUMMARY Chronic wounds are a significant health problem, cases of which are increasing due to rising numbers of diabetic patients, an upsurge in obesity, an increase in cardiovascular disease, and an aging of the population in the USA, Europe, Japan, and China. Clinical characteristics of chronic wounds are that they are hypoxic (have low oxygen levels), which hinders the healing process, and are moderately to highly exudating. While many types of dressings for chronic wounds are indeed available, the transformative dressing of this proposal addresses a poorly understood key property? driving oxygen into a water-filled (exudating) wound bed, such as that found with most chronic wounds. Water covering the wound bed has low absorption of dissolved oxygen and, hence, poor oxygen transport capability. Water is the rate-limiting step for surface oxygen to penetrate hypoxic tissue. The research of this proposal is being designed to overcome this limitation. The overall goal of this proposal is to commercialize a product that can profoundly improve the wound healing process by transporting oxygen to hypoxic wound tissue while simultaneously removing wound exudate, which typically is rich in degradative proteases and microbial burden (that also hinder wound healing). The specific aims of this proposal include synthesizing oxygen-transporting polymers, mechanically incorporating water absorbing polymers, and testing the resulting materials. Rochal's marketing and sales subsidiary, Atteris Healthcare, will launch the product, if successful, resulting from this research. The Atteris and Rochal teams have determined a wound care market need for a product such as of this proposal ? and are approaching the science in a unique and sound, although risky, manner - to provide ultimately a more conducive environment for wound healing for hypoxic wounds that are nonhealing or difficult to heal.